Advance Base a chance for Ashworth reinvention

April 05, 2012|By Jessica Hopper, Special to the Tribune

For musicians, the dream is always to leave the day job behind. For Owen Ashworth, being a full-time musician and supporting himself by touring was no longer the be-all and end-all, so he did the unthinkable. He quit. Which, as one-man-band Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, he could easily do.

"In the 13 years I was doing Casiotone, my friends were on their third or fourth band. I was envious they'd had so many breakups, so many chances for endings and fresh starts," Ashworth says. "I'd gotten fed up with music, and I realized I needed to just go cold turkey and stop, sort out the rest of my life. My hearing was messed up from touring 6 months a year and I just needed to go home."

Naturally, the breakup wasn't permanent. Last year, Ashworth began writing songs again, in earnest, on a Fender Rhodes electric piano he bought. There would be no rehearsal of old songs — he was forming a new catalog of songs; this was a new thing: Advance Base.

"For a while, in the beginning, every time I wrote a song I would add them up and think 'Well, now I've got 32 minutes of material for a concert,'" he says, laughing. "I wanted new songs. I was in a new context, I didn't want to be singing songs I wrote at 21."

While Ashworth was excited about the new band, his Casiotone fans were mourning.

"Some people have been sad and disappointed that I am not playing old Casiotone songs, but it feels good rebuilding, and I've been getting enthusiastic emails about the singles I have put out so far," Ashworth says.

After a decade-plus of building Casiotone's fan base from the ground up by playing 150 shows a year, Ashworth is happy to have an audience waiting for Advance Base, even a small one. "It's nice to know people are waiting, that there is some mystery and anticipation."

With the Advance Base debut album, "A Shut-In's Prayer," due in May, Ashworth is eager to play a few shows around the Midwest, but he likes that music is now his part-time gig, his daydream, rather than his manic hustle.

He's got a new dream job that takes up most of his days: he's a stay-at-home dad with a 5-month-old daughter. "When I sit down at night, my frustration is from waiting to play (music), it's something I am looking forward to," Ashworth explains. "Which is different from when I spent all day working on music and then more and more all the administrative tasks that went with it."

Becoming a father is also central to the album's theme, which was written during his wife's pregnancy. "I was writing about family, relationships — talking to my parents a lot and having a new appreciation of what they went through. It turns out my dad was a stay-at-home dad with me, when I was a baby, too."

Though he has less time to work on and think about music, Ashworth is OK with his burgeoning family pushing his obsession to the second slot. "Music is something I just do for fun now, and it's a great change."